The American plutocrats--those who by force of their wealth share in the direction of public policy--must carry on. They have no choice. If they are to continue as plutocrats, they must continue to rule. If they continue to rule, they must shoulder the duties of rulership. They may not relish the responsibility which their economic position has thrust upon them any more than the sojourners in Newfoundland relish the savage winters. Nevertheless, those who own the wealth of a capitalist nation must accept the results of that ownership just as those who remain in Newfoundland must accept the winter storms. The owners of American timber, mines, factories, railroads, banks and newspapers may dislike the connotations of imperialism; may believe firmly in the principles of competition and individualism; may yearn for the nineteenth century isolation which was so intimate a feature of American economic life. But their longings are in vain. The old world has passed forever; the sun has risen on a new day--a day of world contacts for the United States. Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts stated the matter with rare accuracy in a speech which he made during the discussion over the conquest of the Philippines. After explaining that wars come, "never ostensibly, but actually from economic causes," Senator Lodge said (_Congressional Record_, 56th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 637. January 7, 1901): "We occupy a great position economically. We are marching on to a still greater one. You may impede it, you may check it, but you cannot stop the work of economic forces. You cannot stop the advance of the United States.... The American people and the economic forces which underlie all are carrying us forward to the economic supremacy of the world." Senator Lodge spoke the economic truth in 1901. William C. Redfield reënforced it in an address before the American Manufacturers Export Association (_Weekly Bulletin_, April 26, 1920, p. 7): "We cannot be foreign merchants very much longer in this country excepting on a diminishing and diminishing scale--we have got to become foreign constructors; we have got to build with American money--foreign enterprises, railroads, utilities, factories, mills, I know not what, in order that by large ownership in them we may command the trade that normally flows from their operation." That is sound capitalist doctrine. Equally sound is the exhortation that follows: "In so doing we shall be doing nothing new--only new for us. That is the way in which Germany and Great Britain have built up their foreign trade." New it is for America--but it is the course of empire, familiar to every statesman. The lesson which Bismarck, Palmerston and Gray learned in the last century is now being taught by economic pressure to the ruling class of the United States.